Wednesday, March 25, 2009

So it's out. The first trailer for the Where The Wild Things Are movie was released this morning, and it makes the movie look like everything I hope it will be. I'm still a little afraid though... it really is an iconic book from my childhood, and I have to wonder if any movie, especially a live-action film with people in Wild Thing suits, will be able to live up.

A few friends that I've directed my excitement at have responded with weird looks and statements like, "I have no idea what you're talking about." To those people I say, "your childhood is incomplete. Go back and get your Sendak credit."

Saturday, March 7, 2009

A couple of days ago a link started going around for Thru You, a musical project by Kutiman, an Israeli musician and producer. What he's done is take several dozen Youtube videos, chosen for their audio content, and cut and splice them together into a collection of seven brand new, original pieces of music. It's an amazing technical feat to begin with, but the music he's created is incredible in its own right.

The first and last time I saw anyone do something like this was in 1998 when Coldcut and Hexstatic got together to release the Timber EP (Timber remixes video of logging operations, and has a strong anti-clearcutting message). But even Coldcut/Hexstatic didn't quite commit to the concept the way Kutiman has; Timber contains several audio tracks that clearly aren't from the video sources, including some synthesizer sounds.

Thru You is also an incredible mix of styles; funk, dub, R&B, and even big-beat electronic. All seven tracks are excellent, and if I can get my hands on some clean mp3s they'll be going into high rotation on the home stereo. The first track, The Mother of all Funk Chords, is the best demonstration of the video remix concept, but my favourites are probably This is What it Became, an awesome dub track, Babylon Band, which is a bit like an Eastern-European Prodigy meets Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and Just a Lady, a nice slow R&B tune.

The Thru You web site has gone down at least once, probably due to its popularity, so Katiman has posted some alternates on Youtube itself. The videos on the main site seem to be better quality, so it's probably best to view them there (you can also see the original video sources that way by clicking on the Credits link). But, just in case, I'm including links below to the Youtube postings.

During the day, and often at night, Matt works as a DNS infrastructure operator. He is the former DNS Operations Manager for the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (the organization that manages the .ca Internet domain), has worked DNS operations at Afilias (.info, .org, and several others), has served on the board of directors of DNS-OARC, and currently works as the Sr. DNS Engineer for Rightside (.ninja, .rocks, and many others) ... though he doesn't speak for any of the above here.

He enjoys live music, good beer, and speaking about himself in the third person.